Anonymous Communications
on the Internet

Goals

AAAS will convene a workshop-style conference in Irvine, California, in November 1997. It will be hosted by the University of California at Irvine's Department of Information and Computer Sciences and the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. The goal of the conference is to draft a set of criteria describing the contexts in which anonymous and pseudonymous communications are desirable, permissible, or undesirable, and a set of guidelines for the use of anonymous and pseudonymous communications in those situations where their use is to be either encouraged or at least tolerated.

Participants

Attendance at this conference will be by invitation only. About 35 individuals will represent a variety of backgrounds and perspectives including the computing industry (such as Internet service providers, network administrators, and providers of "anonymizing" services) the legal community, professional societies, academic institutions, law enforcement agencies, and other agencies of government.

Resources

• The conference will draw upon the results of the on-line survey and focus groups being conducted in the summer of 1997.
• Each participant will be asked to prepare a short "issue brief" reflecting his or her viewpoint on anonymous/pseudonymous communications.
• Four commissioned papers concerning anonymity and pseudonymity will be presented in order to provide a common information base for participants and to help focus conference discussions.
  • Technical Dimensions, by Peter Wayner, Consulting Editor, BYTE Magazine;
  • Ethical and Social Dimensions, by Gary Marx, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Director of the Center for the Social Study of Information Technology;
  • Legal Dimensions (predominantly US law), by Michael Froomkin, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami Law School; and
  • Commercial Dimensions, by Donna Hoffman, Associate Professor of Management, and Co-Director of Project 2000 at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University.